Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Inside a viral website

notfunatparties.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 305 posts

Re: Inside a viral website

#191

Post by tomjohnneill »

crazypython wrote: post #152

This is terribly overengineered. He just needs a static CDN host– such as Surge.sh, Netlify, AWS CloudFront, or Cloudflare. Everything can be calculated clientside. > It’s worth pointing out that for all the criticism, the Next.js + Vercel combination meant that I didn’t have to worry about scaling the site at any point. There were millions of hits, and sometimes thousands per second, and it all just worked. The basi…

The point is that NextJS does create a static site. And Vercel can be just a static CDN, as it was for this.

Re: Inside a viral website

#192

Post by migueloller »

I know the HN comments section is notorious for criticizing solutions they don't like because they seem too complex or unnecessary for them [1] but I'm honestly surprised that's happening with Next.js/Vercel here.

So many are saying that this could've been a static site distributed by a CDN. That's what a Next.js app on Vercel does by default! Unless you use `getServerSideProps`, Next.js will create a static site at build time and when deployed to Vercel it will be hosted on their CDN. Spending just a bit of time to understand why Next.js is so popular would've made that clear to most people here. But I guess that's not as easy as just criticizing it for bloat without knowing how it works and moving on?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Re: Inside a viral website

#193

Post by jrochkind1 »

Sebb767 wrote: post #181
jrochkind1 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, NFT's are one of the weirdest blockchain related scams/pyramid schemes yet.

> pyramid scheme Could this be a pyramid scheme? From my (very limited) understanding of the technology, it is basically a single-sell item - so the value you get out of it does not depend on whether they take off or cease to exists post-buy. A pyramid doesn't really fit to this. Or am I missing something?

good point.

I'm used to applying "pyramid scheme" to "i buy this thing not cause I want it but just hoping I can sell it to someone else for more money later, and they're going to be doing the same thing as me." Cause that is likely to leave someone holding the bag. But I guess that is an overlapping phenomenon that may not be the same as a pyramid scheme.

What do we call that phenomenon? Just "capitalism"?

Re: Inside a viral website

#194

Post by martin_a »

platz wrote: post #61
gumby wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s valuable because someone felt it was. It’s the pet rock of 2021.

https://opensea.io/assets/0x495f947276749ce646f68ac8c2484200... > Link to a print-ready high-resolution image file will be unlocked on purchase (2048 x 2048 pixels). LOL

As somebody working in the printing industry, I would not call that "printable", but okay...

(Except you don't want your art to be printed in a reasonable size.)

Re: Inside a viral website

#195

Post by F_J_H »

camillomiller wrote: post #37

The main takeaway for me: > In my day job, we use Next.js for almost everything we build. It’s a framework built on top of React that just strips out almost all the complexity of building fairly complicated websites. Obviously, this wasn’t a complicated website, but I went with what I’m most familiar with. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail :D Edit to say that I think it's an amazing little wholesom…

Thank goodness for creative people who think of new and ingenious ways to use tools differently than originally intended. It's the heart of innovation.

Re: Inside a viral website

#196

Post by deckard1 »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #56
camillomiller wrote: post #37

The main takeaway for me: > In my day job, we use Next.js for almost everything we build. It’s a framework built on top of React that just strips out almost all the complexity of building fairly complicated websites. Obviously, this wasn’t a complicated website, but I went with what I’m most familiar with. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail :D Edit to say that I think it's an amazing little wholesom…

Honest question for someone who is not a web developer: why not use Next.js?

if you need a static site, there are a thousand generators out there much easier to use than React+nextjs. Some of these are easy enough that a non-developer can use and update.

Using code to generate static sites is not new or particularly interesting. We have been caching PHP and Perl sites so that they are "static" since the dawn of the web. CDNs are really really old now. It feels like a new batch of developers don't know that caching is a thing and "static" is a hot buzzword.

Re: Inside a viral website

#197

Post by zepearl »

dayvid wrote: post #184
bkanber wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the last 10 years or so I've been running a free-to-use Morse Code online radio thing. It has cost me about $1000 to host so far, and has a couple of hundred DAUs. The users are not shy about feature requests, and they're not shy about complaining that I haven't implemented their feature requests. So I made a pledge to the userbase that if they collectively donate $1000 to the site, I'll start working on v2. I po…

Makes me think of Wikipedia who have probably A/B tested donation requests to death and have them take up half the page.

Wikipedia is in my opinion unluckily a complex example because the donations are actually for Wikimedia.

In my case I donated only once to them and I understood only later that (apparently?) most of the $ isn't being used for Wikipedia, therefore as I'm not interested in their other projects I never donated anything anymore to them - they can make that banner as big&flashy as they want but the fact remains that I don't want my $ used for non-Wikipedia-related activities.

Re: Inside a viral website

#198

Post by erik_seaberg »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #193
Sebb767 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pyramid scheme Could this be a pyramid scheme? From my (very limited) understanding of the technology, it is basically a single-sell item - so the value you get out of it does not depend on whether they take off or cease to exists post-buy. A pyramid doesn't really fit to this. Or am I missing something?

good point. I'm used to applying "pyramid scheme" to "i buy this thing not cause I want it but just hoping I can sell it to someone else for more money later, and they're going to be doing the same thing as me." Cause that is likely to leave someone holding the bag. But I guess that is an overlapping phenomenon that may not be the same as a pyramid scheme. What do we call that phenomenon? Just "capitalism"?

A pyramid scheme pays out fake returns that were actually new investments, which requires unsustainable geometric growth. An asset bubble doesn’t depend on fraud or growth, it just keeps going until speculators’ confidence is shaken.

Re: Inside a viral website

#199

Post by sneak »

migueloller wrote: post #192

I know the HN comments section is notorious for criticizing solutions they don't like because they seem too complex or unnecessary for them [1] but I'm honestly surprised that's happening with Next.js/Vercel here. So many are saying that this could've been a static site distributed by a CDN. That's what a Next.js app on Vercel does by default! Unless you use `getServerSideProps`, Next.js will create a static site at…

Javascript aside, more things can and should be static sites.

(More things should render their basic, static-site content without having to exec js, too.)

The web would be a lot better if this were the case.

Re: Inside a viral website

#200

Post by migueloller »

sneak wrote: post #199
migueloller wrote: post #192

I know the HN comments section is notorious for criticizing solutions they don't like because they seem too complex or unnecessary for them [1] but I'm honestly surprised that's happening with Next.js/Vercel here. So many are saying that this could've been a static site distributed by a CDN. That's what a Next.js app on Vercel does by default! Unless you use `getServerSideProps`, Next.js will create a static site at…

Javascript aside, more things can and should be static sites. (More things should render their basic, static-site content without having to exec js, too.) The web would be a lot better if this were the case.

I believe you can still do this in Next.js with some extra work to exclude the JS bundle. For example, you can use a custom `_document` page and exclude the `NextScript` component [1]. It would be nice if this was supported as a first-class concept, though.

[1] https://nextjs.org/docs/advanced-features/custom-document

Post reply on HN